The Avengers is, from what I've read, breezy and entertaining, for being a nearly two-and-a-half-hour movie about comic book superheroes. Populated by these super-powered and super-regular folks, a team of good-guys battles a bad-guy, or team of bad-guys, I'm not sure. I enjoyed the Iron Man movies and Thor, but haven't scene Capn' or the Hulk. Good-guys versus bad-guys, even while the teammates "battle" themselves, I hear anyway.
Battleship is about invading aliens and Earth's last stand, or defensive battle. While it's based on a board game that itself was based on a pencil and paper game that predates WWI, it seems to be original, as far as it's relation to the source material may be concerned. Originality is something that I go on and on about, especially when it comes to the film industry.
It seems like currently most major films are either sequels or based on some other well known source. In The Avengers you get a super-duper sequel that's also based on a well known source. Battleship is the next best thing: pure spectacle. Bonus points for being based on a game most folks 25 years old or older could recognize.
The things these types of movies have in common is that they're safe--safe in regards to their appeal for investors. The growing complexity in the special effects of these types of films make them increasingly expensive propositions.
Maybe the thirst for a more complex film is waning...
Super-heroes vs super-villains. Aliens invading. Summing up two of the major films in just a handful of words.
In 1990 the world lost a preeminent artist, a character himself that was able to touch so many and get them thinking. His technological innovations were always leading the pack, but his special effects were mostly limited what's known as in-camera applications--effects achieved in the real world captured on film, not added in post-production. I'm, of course, talking about Jim Henson, famed puppeteer and entertainer.
Puppetry is an art form that, on the whole in mainstream America, may be on the wane, overall. They did just make a new Muppet movie, and Sesame Street is still entertaining and teaching young people, but at the height of puppetry's mainstream popularity, the Muppets television show was a smart cutting edge comedy, various Muppet characters made appearances on late-night talk shows, an animated show was airing, and two separate children's shows were on television, one on Public Broadcasting, the other on HBO.
When Children's Television Workshop decided to hand over the reigns of their morning program, Sesame Street, to Jim Henson, the wider PBS having world was introduced to his brand of engaging topics and means of communicating those topics. In one early episode of Sesame Street Bert and Ernie are putzing around their house, and Ernie stops what he's doing, looks right into the camera, and calls Bert to come over, that they have a special guest. Bert joins him and both he and Ernie welcome "you" into their home, the proverbial fourth-wall breaking acknowledgement of the home audience. Meanwhile at home kids are looking around their living rooms as it say "me?", and a whole generation of kids are instantly connected and hooked.
Jim Henson's films and television show projects were filled with difficult concepts to wrap heads around, but not impossible concepts, and he would routinely challenge children and adults alike. He would extend the benefit of the doubt that his audience could get it in a way that would be far too daring to get major financial backing for today.
Let's for a moment take a look at Henson's best known commercial flop, Dark Crystal. Cries of it was too dark or too adult are the most lobbed of the criticisms, but technologically it was as advanced as anything ever made up until then. But Henson knew that the technology was only as important as it was helpful to the story.
I don't remember seeing the movie as a child, and watched it for the first time only a few years ago. I was taken aback by the deep complexity that the ultimate, overarching story. A large crystal has split and two types of beings have emerged: the tyrannical vulture-like Skeksis and the mystical hunchbacks urRu. They seem to be at odds with one another, but near the climax of the film, when during a battle a Skeksis is killed, an urRu disappears. In fact, for each Skeksis done in, a corresponding urRu dies.
See kiddies, the good-guys and the bad-guys are really the same thing, separated only by a cracked crystal. In the end, when the crystal is fixed and the shard is replaced, the Skeksis and the urRu are reconnected into their apparent original state, UrSkeks. The lesson for the children (and adults): only with proper perspective on wealth and money can a person's two halves be in balance.
How about the messages from one of Jim Henson's kid's shows that was rather beloved and not considered a flop, Fraggle Rock. This is a program I do remember watching, which is strange, because it aired on HBO and I don't remember us having that channel, but it could have been on PBS in a later round of airing.
The Fraggles are the main characters, about 18 inches tall, living in a cave system that has connecting entrance/exits to two different worlds. One is the workshop of the human, a white haired old man and his dog Sprocket, while the other is the world of the Gorgs, three very large beasts that are always after the Fraggles and exhibit signs of being a classic dysfunctional family. They keep a trash-heap, which acts as the Fraggles oracle. Inside Fraggle Rock, their cave system, they share space with the Doozers, tiny builders who are constantly building structures out of a material they synthesize from the radishes that the Fraggles eat. This makes their building material candy for the Fraggles, who tend to eat large portions of the construction.
One of the very best features of the show is that when extraordinary things happen the Fraggles have explanations for them that they convince themselves are the case, which are known by the viewer to be wrong. The Fraggles make a decision to act based on these wrong conclusions, and the outcome turns out beneficial for them--just like they'd hoped--but almost despite their actions, or for reasons that have nothing to do with their actions.
Children watching this get a lesson in the complexity of the world's machinations and about how being wrong can have all sorts of effects; good, bad, unintended, and even unrelated. Kids exposed to these subjects are suddenly able to be trusted intellectually with deeper storylines, like about prejudice and spirituality. That's just what Jim Henson and his producers did.
Here's a quick recap of one of the stories, about symbiosis. The tall activist Fraggle, Mokey, after watching the Fraggles regularly eating the Doozer structures, believes that the Fraggles are being harmful to the Doozers. She starts a campaign to get the Fraggles to stop eating the candy-structure, which is successful. Without the constant eating of the building material, the Doozers start to fill up the entire cave system, making it impossible for the both the Fraggles and Doozers to literally do anything. Their entire system of life is at risk, because Mokey thought she was doing the right thing.
Realizing that the Doozers and Fraggles need each other, she convinces everyone to forget what she convinced them of earlier, and order is eventually restored.
Are the aliens from Battleship here to teach us about how we need to better understand our symbiotic relationships with the environment? I'm not sure, but from the look of the ads, they're trying to kill everyone and take over (jokes on them!). Same thing with Loki, and whatever big-ass critter is visible Godzilla-ing Manhattan in the commercials.
I guess if a movie like last year's The Artist can win the Oscar for Best Film, their may be hope for the eventual return of serious complexity in projects of all kinds. Maybe I'm a cynic. Movies like Cool Hand Luke and Bullet and French Connection just don't get made anymore, and as a populace we're worse off because of it.
This is just part of the growing trend of dumbing everything down and not expecting your audiences to think, or even be capable of it. It doesn't bode well that our masses aren't being challenged.
Super-heroes vs super-villains. Aliens invading. Summing up two of the major films in just a handful of words.
In 1990 the world lost a preeminent artist, a character himself that was able to touch so many and get them thinking. His technological innovations were always leading the pack, but his special effects were mostly limited what's known as in-camera applications--effects achieved in the real world captured on film, not added in post-production. I'm, of course, talking about Jim Henson, famed puppeteer and entertainer.
Puppetry is an art form that, on the whole in mainstream America, may be on the wane, overall. They did just make a new Muppet movie, and Sesame Street is still entertaining and teaching young people, but at the height of puppetry's mainstream popularity, the Muppets television show was a smart cutting edge comedy, various Muppet characters made appearances on late-night talk shows, an animated show was airing, and two separate children's shows were on television, one on Public Broadcasting, the other on HBO.
When Children's Television Workshop decided to hand over the reigns of their morning program, Sesame Street, to Jim Henson, the wider PBS having world was introduced to his brand of engaging topics and means of communicating those topics. In one early episode of Sesame Street Bert and Ernie are putzing around their house, and Ernie stops what he's doing, looks right into the camera, and calls Bert to come over, that they have a special guest. Bert joins him and both he and Ernie welcome "you" into their home, the proverbial fourth-wall breaking acknowledgement of the home audience. Meanwhile at home kids are looking around their living rooms as it say "me?", and a whole generation of kids are instantly connected and hooked.
Jim Henson's films and television show projects were filled with difficult concepts to wrap heads around, but not impossible concepts, and he would routinely challenge children and adults alike. He would extend the benefit of the doubt that his audience could get it in a way that would be far too daring to get major financial backing for today.
Let's for a moment take a look at Henson's best known commercial flop, Dark Crystal. Cries of it was too dark or too adult are the most lobbed of the criticisms, but technologically it was as advanced as anything ever made up until then. But Henson knew that the technology was only as important as it was helpful to the story.
I don't remember seeing the movie as a child, and watched it for the first time only a few years ago. I was taken aback by the deep complexity that the ultimate, overarching story. A large crystal has split and two types of beings have emerged: the tyrannical vulture-like Skeksis and the mystical hunchbacks urRu. They seem to be at odds with one another, but near the climax of the film, when during a battle a Skeksis is killed, an urRu disappears. In fact, for each Skeksis done in, a corresponding urRu dies.
See kiddies, the good-guys and the bad-guys are really the same thing, separated only by a cracked crystal. In the end, when the crystal is fixed and the shard is replaced, the Skeksis and the urRu are reconnected into their apparent original state, UrSkeks. The lesson for the children (and adults): only with proper perspective on wealth and money can a person's two halves be in balance.
How about the messages from one of Jim Henson's kid's shows that was rather beloved and not considered a flop, Fraggle Rock. This is a program I do remember watching, which is strange, because it aired on HBO and I don't remember us having that channel, but it could have been on PBS in a later round of airing.
The Fraggles are the main characters, about 18 inches tall, living in a cave system that has connecting entrance/exits to two different worlds. One is the workshop of the human, a white haired old man and his dog Sprocket, while the other is the world of the Gorgs, three very large beasts that are always after the Fraggles and exhibit signs of being a classic dysfunctional family. They keep a trash-heap, which acts as the Fraggles oracle. Inside Fraggle Rock, their cave system, they share space with the Doozers, tiny builders who are constantly building structures out of a material they synthesize from the radishes that the Fraggles eat. This makes their building material candy for the Fraggles, who tend to eat large portions of the construction.
One of the very best features of the show is that when extraordinary things happen the Fraggles have explanations for them that they convince themselves are the case, which are known by the viewer to be wrong. The Fraggles make a decision to act based on these wrong conclusions, and the outcome turns out beneficial for them--just like they'd hoped--but almost despite their actions, or for reasons that have nothing to do with their actions.
Children watching this get a lesson in the complexity of the world's machinations and about how being wrong can have all sorts of effects; good, bad, unintended, and even unrelated. Kids exposed to these subjects are suddenly able to be trusted intellectually with deeper storylines, like about prejudice and spirituality. That's just what Jim Henson and his producers did.
Here's a quick recap of one of the stories, about symbiosis. The tall activist Fraggle, Mokey, after watching the Fraggles regularly eating the Doozer structures, believes that the Fraggles are being harmful to the Doozers. She starts a campaign to get the Fraggles to stop eating the candy-structure, which is successful. Without the constant eating of the building material, the Doozers start to fill up the entire cave system, making it impossible for the both the Fraggles and Doozers to literally do anything. Their entire system of life is at risk, because Mokey thought she was doing the right thing.
Realizing that the Doozers and Fraggles need each other, she convinces everyone to forget what she convinced them of earlier, and order is eventually restored.
Are the aliens from Battleship here to teach us about how we need to better understand our symbiotic relationships with the environment? I'm not sure, but from the look of the ads, they're trying to kill everyone and take over (jokes on them!). Same thing with Loki, and whatever big-ass critter is visible Godzilla-ing Manhattan in the commercials.
I guess if a movie like last year's The Artist can win the Oscar for Best Film, their may be hope for the eventual return of serious complexity in projects of all kinds. Maybe I'm a cynic. Movies like Cool Hand Luke and Bullet and French Connection just don't get made anymore, and as a populace we're worse off because of it.
This is just part of the growing trend of dumbing everything down and not expecting your audiences to think, or even be capable of it. It doesn't bode well that our masses aren't being challenged.
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